Field of the Invention
In certain aspects, the present invention relates generally to starch products and starch compositions. In more particular aspects, the present invention relates more specifically to starch products and starch compositions useful for thickening aqueous liquids, for example, for use by people suffering from dysphagia.
Technical Background
Difficulty or discomfort in swallowing is known as dysphagia. Dysphagia can accompany a wide variety of conditions, such as blunt throat injury, surgery caused impairment, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Asperger's syndrome, esophageal cancer, laryngeal cancer, Chagus disease, celiac, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, Niemann-Pick disease, neurological conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, obesity, Riley-Day syndrome, high cholesterol, scleroderma, and diabetes. People with dysphagia generally lack the ability to properly seal the windpipe or to propel an entire bolus of food and/or beverage to the stomach. Accordingly, dysphagic people are at risk of having food or beverages being misrouted into their lungs, which presents the risk of bacterial infection, pneumonia, and even asphyxiation.
Dysphagia can be especially problematic with respect to the swallowing of liquids. Due to their low viscosity, they are especially susceptible to dripping into the lungs. Thickening such liquids for consumption is a common method of addressing this problem. Thickening also helps provide better bolus control and provides greater oral stimulation, which can also help manage the symptoms of dysphagia.
Modified food starches are often used to thicken liquids for dysphagia patients. Most conveniently, thickening can be performed at the time of service, for example by the addition of a dry powder to a desired liquid followed by agitation. Starches, however, can be difficult to homogeneously mix into a liquid. For example, in many cases the starch wets quickly, forming stringy, glue-like masses, potentially trapping some of the dry material in pockets to form “fish eyes” or powder clumps These attributes can be highly displeasing to the consumer. Accordingly, it is desirable to have a starch thickening agent that combines homogeneously with a liquid quickly with minimal stirring. This can be especially difficult when the liquid is milk; the complex nature of the fat and protein suspension present in milk makes the dispersion properties of the starch difficult to predict, especially with respect to process variability in large-scale manufacture. These issues have ultimately made the provision of a reliably milk-dispersible starch thickener difficult.
Thus, there remains a need for an improved starch thickener that is reliably and readily milk-dispersible.